“Speaking to reporters on a visit to US troops in Afghanistan, Gates smirked on hearing the news. “I hadn’t heard that, but that sounds like good news to me,” he said.”

Since Julian Assange is simply supposed to clear his good name in front of a Swedish court one can only assume that the US defence secretary was glad that this matter can now be cleared up… Right…? Right…?

Consumers, Freedom of Speech and Internet-Vietnam

After Amazon, EveryDNS, Tableau Software, PayPal, Switzerland’s PostFinance and Mastercard now Visa joins the club of “independent” entities that consumers who care about free speech will want to investigate for their business practices and may want to avoid in the future:

It’s a bit hard to catch everything that’s being said in the V.O., so here is the text from the video’s YouTube page (click those arrows under the total views number to see it):

“Corrupt governments of the world, we are anonymous. For some time now, voices have been crying out in unison against the new ACTA laws. The gross inadequacies of the new laws being passed internationally have been pointed out repeatedly. Our chief complaint is that such measures would restrict people’s access to the internet.

In these modern times access to the internet is fast becoming a basic human right. Just like any other basic human right, we believe that it is wrong to infringe upon it. To threaten to cut people off from the global consciousness as you have is criminal and abhorrent. To move to censor content on the internet based on your own prejudice is at best laughably impossible, at worst, morally reprehensible.

The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny. Such actions taken against you, and those you out source your malignant litigation too, are inevitable, unavoidable and unstoppable.